The State of the Indian Capital Market

There are fundamental problems in the Indian capital market structure, such as lack of liquidity and limited depth and breadth. Many listed securities on stock exchanges are not traded; among the traded securities, not many are traded actively. The market is highly concentrated; a few companies dominate trading at the exchanges. This clearly narrows the breadth of the market, giving rise to liquidity problems for many stocks. Geographic breadth is another problem for Indian markets. Around 80% to 90% of total cash trading and 70% to 80% of mutual fund ownership come from the top 10 cities, with the top two cities (Mumbai and Delhi) accounting for about 60% in each segment.. These shortcomings can be addressed by technology development, better regulations, and focus on financial inclusion. India’s capital market regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), has been addressing many of these issues. Although the equity market in India is relatively well developed, the debt market is lagging by some distance. The debt market is dominated by government securities. The corporate bond market is very small for a number of reasons, including lack of market infrastructure and adequate regulatory framework, low liquidity, lack of investor interest, etc. Efforts are being made to develop the corporate bond market. Some of the measures include increasing the limit for foreign participation, reducing issuance and transaction costs for corporate bonds, applying similar mark to market accounting requirements for loan and corporate bonds to discourage banks from relying heavily on loans, and setting up a basic framework of credit default swaps on corporate bonds in the country. Some positive results have been observed in recent years, but debt market development will require long-term efforts and commitment. By contrast, India has a healthy exchange-traded derivatives market. India started off with trading in derivatives in the early 2000s, initially allowing trading in index futures (2000) and index options (2001). Options and futures on stocks were allowed in 2001. Since then the product universe has expanded, as has the investor base, resulting in higher volumes and a robust trading platform with sound risk management practices. Index futures and options and stocks futures dominate derivative contracts traded at Indian exchanges. The investor segment is broadly classified into retail and institutional segments. The retail segment brings in the volume, but its trades are essentially low value. A key concern has been this segment’s drop in participation in the secondary market and also in IPOs. This decline began with the crisis in 2008, but the lackluster performance of most IPOs has contributed to what has become an alarming drop. Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have been a dominant contributor to Indian markets. Since economic reforms started in 1991, India has focused on attracting foreign investment flows by relaxing eligibility conditions for FIIs, relaxing investment limits, and expanding investment instruments. The intermediaries in the market include the exchanges and brokerages. India has 22 stock exchanges registered with SEBI, with over 8,000 registered brokers and over 60,000 registered subbrokers. However, most of the trading takes place at the two major pan-Indian exchanges, National Stock Exchange (NSE) and the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). NSE is the largest exchange in the country, with around 70% of the equity volumes, while BSE is the second largest. A lot of revamp is happening within exchanges as they turn more competitive to gain market share. Brokers, both domestic and international, are competing in a highly fragmented market. The next wave of growth will probably arise out of technological capabilities, and hence brokerages are trying to outdo each other by providing advanced trading tools like Direct Market Access (DMA) support and algorithmic trading solutions. India has been an early adopter of the various technological changes occurring in the capital markets. With electronic trading picking up along with the adoption of the internet, booming retail equity business evolved in the last 10 years. Surprisingly, due to the market boom and IPO bonanza, retail adoption of technology initially outgrew technology adoption on the institutional side, where voice brokers still played a large part. As foreign participation in the Indian markets picked up, it brought in a rigor and technological requirement essential for international competition leading to adoption of the latest technologies by domestic market participants. A key reason for the success of the Indian capital markets has been the efficiency of SEBI, the capital market regulator. Four regulators control the participants in the securities market. There have been turf wars, and the future might see a super-regulator. India has a good regulatory environment regulating the capital markets, which shielded the economy, to some extent, from larger negative impacts of the global financial crisis and helped it regain its mark quickly afterwards. The regulator has been cautious in expanding the market, and transparency and investor protection have always been high on its agenda. This has sometimes created conflicts with industries as well as among regulators, but it has taken the markets along the right path of development.